Statistics
Early Runners
How dominant is trainer Wesley Ward in Keeneland spring juvenile races?
When it comes to early season maiden races, Ward’s record is pretty close to off the charts. Since 2009, there have been 47 2-year-old maiden events at the Keeneland spring meet. Ward has had starters in 45 of them. He won 22 of them or 48.9 percent.
Incredible. I didn’t know until I read @DougieSal today, though, that trainer John Shirreffs was once a debut runner win machine:
… in the late 1990’s John Shirreffs was the most brilliant debut trainer in the land. In 1998 and 1999 he trained 24 first-time starters and a mind-boggling 14 of them won their debut and another four finished second. In those days, the Southern California circuit was unquestionably the toughest year-round circuit in horse racing, and Shirreffs won at a 58.3% clip with first-time starters and 75% of his debuters finished first or second.
His takeaway: Bet Cozmic One with caution, if you insist on doing it all.
The Massachusetts Experiment
One year’s decline isn’t a trend, but the fatality rate reduction at Suffolk Downs reported by racing director Jennifer Durenberger is still impressive:
Let’s look first at the catastrophic injury rate for the meet: 1.24 per thousand starts. This is down from 1.73 in 2013 — a nearly 30 percent reduction …
Thanks to the Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database (EID), which captures data from an amazing 93 percent of all flat racing days, we know that the average catastrophic injury rate in 2013 was 1.9 per thousand starts. That includes all horses — young and old, graded stakes competitors and seasoned claimers, sprinters and routers, turf specialists and mudders. When we separate that by surface, we see a nationwide average of 1.63 catastrophic injuries per thousand turf starters and 2.08 per thousand dirt starters. At Suffolk Downs in 2014, the turf rate was 1.44 and the dirt rate was 1.20 — less than 60 percent of the national average.
Among the losses incurred by Suffolk Downs’ demise, count the reform work done by state regulators in partnership with track management since 2012, work that included adopting uniform medication rules and a horse-first welfare policy, making racing safer for vulnerable (older, cheaper) horses.
Trainers: Who Gets the Distance?
TimeformUS takes a look at the distance race statistics of trainers with likely Belmont Stakes starters. Spoilers: The numbers at 12+ furlongs are small. Pletcher is solid. Mott knows what he’s doing. Clement has great turf form.
The Odds
FiveThirtyEight analyzes the 36-year Triple Crown drought:
The last 12 horses to win the Derby and the Preakness have failed to complete the Triple Crown. With a historical success rate of 33 percent, the current 12-race slump is unlikely: The odds of it happening by chance are about 1 in 130 — nearly the same as the 2011 Atlanta Braves failing to make Major League Baseball’s playoffs with 18 games remaining and an 8.5-game lead for the wild card.
Here’s another way of putting it:
The odds of all 11 horses that raced in the Belmont losing at their race odds (by chance) are only 1 in 20,000 — about the odds of a random pitcher throwing a perfect game on a given night.
California Chrome is expected to face a full field in the Belmont Stakes. NYRA reported the historically daunting number of 11 on Saturday:
No horse has won the Triple Crown facing more than seven rivals, which Seattle Slew and Citation did in 1977 and 1948, respectively. Secretariat in 1973 and Affirmed, the most recent Triple Crown winner in 1978, both defeated four others.
With Intense Holiday now out after suffering a condylar fracture while working on Sunday (trainer Todd Pletcher said the injury wasn’t life-threatening and may not be career-ending), the list of possible challengers stands at 10, including Wicked Strong, Tonalist, Samraat, and Commissioner. All four also worked on Sunday: Videos of their works, plus one of California Chrome galloping, are available on the NYRA YouTube channel.
5/28/14 Update: Medal Count, eighth in the Kentucky Derby, has been declared possible for the Belmont. “[His] Derby was better than it looks,” said trainer Dale Romans, making a case for his colt as Triple Crown spoiler. “History shows it will be difficult for California Chrome.”
Not So Classic
Byron Rogers in Thursday’s TDN (PDF):
Without milkshakes and steroids the horses that have been selected for and trained as “classic types” by bloodstock agents, owners and trainers are now exposed for the sprinters that they genetically are.
I speculated about something similar in 2013, after Oxbow won the Preakness Stakes in a slow time and Bill Oppenheim brought up the trend of declining Beyer speed figures in the spring classics. Commenting on the Belmont Stakes figure collapse that began with Da’Tara in 2008, I wrote:
[T]he data suggest that there may be additional factors at work, such as changing training practices and the elimination of routine steroid use.
Rogers reports data, in the form of a genetic study done by his pedigree consulting practice on 1500+ horses, that found “the North American breeding population has the second highest percentage of horses that have been genetically selected for sprinting,” and concludes that there’s no reversing that trend, which began decades ago, without “significant structural changes.” If that happened, in his view, the game likely wouldn’t see a renewed emphasis on breeding for distance expressed in speed figures for at least 15-20 years. That’s probably more time than interests the market.
For a sense of how much things have changed (beyond the classic races), consider these statistics tweeted by @o_crunk last fall (via Sid Fernando):
Percentage of US races longer than 1M on dirt and synth:
1991 – 19.91%
1996 – 16.78%
2001 – 15.57%
2006 – 14.31%
2011 – 13.46%
Percentage of US races on dirt and synth at 6F or less:
1991 – 54.24%
1996 – 51.30%
2001 – 50.31%
2006 – 50.58%
2011 – 49.71%
Percentage of US dirt and synth races at less than 6F:
1991 – 13.27%
1996 – 15.15%
2001 – 17.92%
2006 – 21.60%
2011 – 23.25%
So, shortening the Kentucky Derby to nine furlongs from 10, and the Belmont Stakes to 10 furlongs from 12, as Oppenheim suggests in his most recent column (PDF), would more closely align the classic races with the realities of contemporary American racing and breeding. Whether that’s a worthy goal or not, I’ll leave to breeders and pedigree experts to debate.
The Rule
The one Kentucky Derby rule still going strong is that the Derby winner raced as a 2-year-old. It’s been so every year since 1882. I took a quick look at that record last year, when Verrazano was the unraced-as-a-2YO Derby contender, noting that since 2003, only nine of 192 Derby starters hadn’t raced as a juvenile (that’s now 10 of 211). It’s a small group. Nicole Sauer dives deeper into the numbers, looking at all graded stakes starters from 1973-2013:
During this period, 73% of graded stakes starters raced at age 2, while 27% were unraced as 2-year-olds. If “having a 2-year-old foundation” is important for graded stakes performance at 3, then we should expect a higher proportion of 3-year-old graded stakes winners to have raced at 2. This is the case, but only by a 2.2% margin: 75% of 3-year-old graded stakes winners raced at 2 compared to 25% who didn’t.
So, there’s a slight edge to having juvenile experience. A very slight edge.
Hoppertunity is the sole likely Kentucky Derby starter this year who didn’t race last year. If you like him, though, you have to like that he’s made up for that lack of early experience with five starts so far this year.
Wise Dan’s Return
The Horse of the Year is set to make his first start of 2014 today, and:
“If he is going to be vulnerable, this is it because the others that are in there have been running,” [trainer Charlie] LoPresti said.
True, but he’s also a returning champion. The odds are good that he’ll win. In 2010, I found that returning champions beat the winning favorites average by a significant margin when they made their first starts of a new season.
The stats for returning champions are now updated through 2012: You can view the numbers and complete spreadsheet via Raceday 360. There are a couple of changes in this year’s version: I restricted the data to only starts made in North American races with wagering (horses who returned in non-wagering exhibition races and foreign races were excluded, as were steeplechase champions). I also broke out the numbers by division and decade this year, as well as by class, which revealed a few interesting tidbits.
One thing I left out of the R360 post, but wanted to make note of, is that all champions, not only the favored, won or finished in the money in 186 out of 228 races (or 82% of starts). Be sure to include them in your exotics.
The original data, including all champions named from 1971-2012, and not only those who returned to race, can be downloaded as an Excel file.
4/12/14 Update: And Wise Dan wins the Maker’s 46 Mile by three-quarters of a length over Kaigun. Here’s the returning Horse of the Year chart, updated:
That brings the returning HOTY record to 18 wins from 23 starts (18 wins from 22 favored), for a total payout of $49.10 on $46 bet.
Breeders’ Cup Favorites
From Jeff Scott’s Breeders’ Cup tidbits:
Favorites won 32 percent (38-120) of races in the sample, a figure comparable to the record of racing favorites in general. The fact that BC fields are considerably larger than average may make the 32 percent strike rate higher than expected.
Favorites have had mixed success finishing in the money in the recent years. In 2012, favorites finished in the top three in five of six races on Friday, six of nine on Saturday. In 2011, three of six on Friday, four of nine on Saturday. In 2010, four of six on Friday, four of eight on Saturday.
10/26/13 Addendum: Breeders’ Cup contenders, by the numbers. “There are 121 group or graded stakes winners in the entries, including 71 winners of Group 1 or Grade 1 races.” And 74 of the 172 pre-entries won their last starts.
Breeders’ Cup Stats
Winners win: 48% of Breeders’ Cup winners in the past 10 years won their final prep race, according to Jon White’s research, and 86% finished in the money. Of course, most Breeders’ Cup starters are coming off strong performances — in 2012, 28 of 59 runners on BC Friday won their last race (43 were in the money), and 41 of 103 on Saturday did (75 were ITM). In 2011, 29 of 69 runners on BC Friday won their previous starts (55 were ITM), and 40 of 104 on Saturday were winners (80 were ITM).
New York wins? Heading into last year’s Breeders’ Cup, starters coming off a prep race in New York didn’t have a great record in Arcadia. In the five previous Breeders’ Cup runnings at Santa Anita, 17 New York-prepped horses finished in the money, and only one won. In 2012, though, horses who prepped in New York won two races on BC Friday, and four races on Saturday. Another four finished second or third on Friday, while five did the same on Saturday, out of a total of 11 New York starters on Friday and 25 on Saturday. The Classic was a particularly New York affair — the top four finishers all last raced in the Jockey Club Gold Cup or the Woodward.
Stats and charts for every Breeders’ Cup are available here.
Pletcher Baby ROI
Everyone knows that trainer Todd Pletcher is dominant is Saratoga juvenile races, but he’s profitable, too, in certain scenarios: His five-year win stat for first-time starters in dirt sprint maiden special weights is 32%, with an ROI of $2.57. In the same conditions, restricted to state-breds, he’s 46%, with an ROI of $3.25. “Perhaps the time to take down a Pletcher juvenile firster is in maiden special weight turf routes,” writes Dan Illman, who pulled the preceding numbers from DRF Formulator. Good luck getting a big price in any circumstance, though: The longest juvenile shot Pletcher has won at Saratoga with in the past five years is Interactif, in the 2009 With Anticipation. He was 16-1 at post time. The only other Pletcher winner with double-digit odds was Lawn Man, in a 2012 six-furlong MSW. He was 10-1 going into the gate.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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